63 – Yesterday’s Enterprise

Grade: B+

Summary

The Enterprise comes across some kind of strange time displacement vortex. Suddenly, an older ship comes out of the vortex, and everything is different – most notably that the Federation has been at war against the Klingons for the past 20 years. Also, Tasha Yar is back, and she identifies the older ship as the Enterprise C.

Commentary

Many fans consider this to be one of their favorite episodes, and as one of the best ones of the series. While I agree, I don’t know if it is for the same reasons. I’m not a big fan of the Tasha Yar character, and I was never impressed with Denise Crosby as an actor. But this storyline is excellent, and the writing is some of the best in the entire series.

What I like the most about this episode is that it really feels like a film, and this is the first time in the series when I have thought that way. The production quality is very high, including the soundtrack, special effects, acting, script, storyline, suspense, and even the little minor details. For example, the set, the uniforms, the sound effects and the music are all very different from what we’ve seen up to this point. So it has a very high production value, and it looks more like a feature film than the previous episodes have. In fact, it’s better overall than many films I’ve seen.

Finally, one thing that I found very interesting (and perhaps ironic) is that Tasha Yar says she heard she had died a senseless death in the other timeline, and that she didn’t like the sound of that. I couldn’t help but think that maybe Denise Crosby herself didn’t like the way she was written off the series back in the first season.

Of Note

This is the episode when Worf discovers prune juice and calls it a “warrior’s drink.” At one point in the episode, a voice calls for Dr. Selar – a reference to a character from the episode The Schizoid Man.